Category Archives: home

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Rethinking lawns

Lawns are being rethought. People are planting meadows or strips of meadow, for bees and insects. They need corridors and it helps with plant diversity and the health of the earth. A lawn with pesticides has a huge issue of a depauperate fauna, that it is just one sort of grass. The pesticides will kill insects as well as “weeds”. We have to redefine “weeds” and value the diversity of meadows and wild places and insects. I am hoping that my lawn will be taken over by thyme and oregano and parsley, all of which are spreading in my yard. Half of my yard has been wild and unmown since 2007 and the local deer and birds love it. Plant a meadow or let part of your yard go wild! We need the diversity.

The photograph is from the wild part of my yard in August 2022.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt depauperate.

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This too two to

This two too to I want to remember.
Licking? Touch for certain, together.
Warmth and safety and rest and trust.
The trust eroded as you run away
over and over. You say always but
you say other things that I can’t believe.
And yet my heart is stubborn still.
This two too to I want to remember.

____________________

Poem series: This. This too. This too two.

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Small cat

The kittens were new in 2021 and are so much bigger now. Elwha is the biggest cat I’ve ever had. Tiger face and shoulders. They were a bit malnourished when I got them and Elwha grow out rather than up at first. He was also very worried about food and ate very fast. It took a while for him to trust that more food would come. So far so good and he is much more mellow now.

And they both love to go outside on harness and leash. I have to take them one at a time, because I can’t effectively carry both if one of them freaks out. Elwha is much more likely to freak out than Sol Duc. The recycling truck is particularly scary. Also people, dogs and SUVs.

Early on, when everything was new, Elwha jumped into the bathtub and howled, because he landed in water. He had previously found it empty. I had to rescue him and he was very upset. He spent a full thirty minutes cleaning himself.

Very happy New Year’s Eve. Be careful out there and I hope the New Year brings joys. I am hoping that this will be our last really bad Covid-19 winter, though we may need to do yearly vaccines.

Here is a tea-cat, Hot Kitty, in a teapot that Helen Burling Ottaway made. She was my mother and the poem on the teapot is mine. You can read it here. We drank a lot of tea growing up.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: new.